The Beginning of Wisdom, the first novel from future Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Vincent Benét, was published in 1921 just after the author's graduation from Yale University.

Reflecting the influence of F Scott Fitzgerald, the semi-autobiographical work chronicles the coming of age of Philip Sellaby, who, as a young boy, "doesn't know what it is to be bored, has a quantity of humorous vanity, considerable physical recklessness and is beginning to develop from much scattered and unchecked reading an ashamed fierce curiosity in regard to matters of sex."